KPIs for SEO: measuring SEO success

There are many, many variables at play in an SEO campaign, so successful campaigns rely on a control system to ensure the work undertaken delivers results. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) act as this control system and allow you to identify what is working — and often, more importantly, provide the SEO with an early warning system if something is not moving the needle as expected. KPIs also provide a means to illustrate success to your clients (or company higher-ups if you’re in-house). Typical SEO KPIs like keyword rankings and metrics from tools like Moz or Majestic SEO may be useful for you, but the clients you serve want to see an increase in sales and leads — not simply improved positions and hikes in Domain Authority. In this post, I’ll take a look at how you can use KPIs to better track success and improve results of your SEO campaigns. And possibly most importantly of all, I will show you how to use KPIs to better illustrate the value of the SEO campaigns you undertake to your clients. Improved results, reporting and client retention — what’s not to like? Objectives and KPIs To accurately measure SEO success, we must know what we are trying to achieve and the various steps necessary to do so. If we have followed a structured methodology for creating a digital marketing plan, then we will have identified some specific objectives for the business and our marketing. Our measurement KPIs should map to these objectives, allowing…